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Being kind to myself

I’ve realised now that my taking a break from seeing clients isn’t just about giving myself chance to recharge after a very busy summer but is also about doing nice things for me, in other words being kind to myself.

Now that I’ve stopped I can see how little I have been doing this over the last months. When I wasn’t seeing clients or working with students I was shopping for food, sorting out the decorator, the carpet fitters or the curtain guy. The only thing I really did for myself was to go to a cranial sacral therapist which was more about helping my body to correct damage from an old car accident than being kind to myself. There’s a big difference doing things you need to rather than something just because you can.

This has been my first complete week without clients but I was running down last week too and managed to have coffee with a neighbour I hadn’t met until recently, one who makes delicious, completely natural body butters and lotions. We spent a morning trying out her existing products and exploring new ones that she is developing and yes I have ordered some from her which I am eagerly awaiting to pick up and use.

At the weekend I allowed myself to spend the best part of a day with a friend I haven’t seen for ages. We drank coffee, chatted, caught up and then went out for lunch, in other words we did nothing and enjoyed every minute of it. I have also been walking in woodland, grounding myself and allowing nature to do its work on my body and soul.

This week I have almost held fast to not doing any work although it would have been easy to do some as not all of my work involves seeing clients or students.

Over the last few days I have had a lot of ideas floating around in my head, some of these are about writing possibilities, a half finished book that needs completing, a draft of ideas for something I could write, blog posts for my publisher but so far I have resisted. If know that if I am to really have chance to recharge then I need to stop completely and continue to spend time doing things that are outside of my work completely.

In the vein of being kind to myself I have booked a massage not because my body is telling me it needs one but because I would like one. I am also giving myself time to do an Equinox Labyrinth walk and making the time to eat with them before rather than do something that I can let others do instead. This is extremely unusual for me, to dip, out of something that I had committed to do so that I can do something more enjoyable but I am not indispensable and this is something I have also realised.

I can choose to stop, not to do things because I have to, to do things I want to, things that make me happy, things that give me chance to recharge and which make me feel good and that is my plan. From now until I choose to step back into work, until I get bored and am looking for things to fill my time, until then, I’m going to continue to go for coffee or lunch with friends, to make time to walk in the woods or on the beach, in other works to be kind to myself.

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I am an author, a shamanic and energy healer and an OBOD Ovate. My path has been eclectic and always independent in that I have learnt in the main from my guides plus the occasional human and flexible distance learning hence the name of my blog.
I am also a colour pencil and watercolour artist and my website/blog can me found at http://yvonneryvesart.wordpress.com